My heart beats in your heart

I beat with my fists against your naked chest until I force my way in and grab a hold of your heart. I squeeze tight, wanting you to feel the pain echoed in my own heart. My fingers find a good grip. I go in for the kill. You pin me down with a death stare. Your eyes look into my soul. My grip tightens. Your eyes soften, and all of a sudden your blood covering my hand inch by inch enters my arteries, pumping new pain into my very core.

And then I realise it. In that very second in which I wanted to kill your heart, mine was beating afresh. You were not the masochist, you were the martyr. You pushed me to the brink because it was the only way to make me feel alive again. You revived me, resurrected me from the dismal dread of feeling nothing and, like being shocked back to life, it hurt. My chest felt like it would not contain itself and I gasped for air. It burnt my lungs and brought tears to your eyes.

So there I stood. My fist around your heart, unsure whether to retreat and leave you unscathed, or finish you off with one last brutal blow. Your eyes forced me up against the walls of my own illusions and shattered them unequivocally, because I saw it. Your eyes were not pleading for my mercy or compassion. Your eyes were not asking me to let you live. They were telling me that death would be a welcome distraction from your own misery. You looked strangely content, happy with your fate, the unwitting favour I was doing you.

Terrified, the truth hit me between the eyes as I stood frozen. Your heart made my heart beat again, and if you live, I live. If you die, I die. I have stubbornly refused to acknowledge the truth, the deep seated reality that you and I are intertwined. My heart beats in your heart. Slowly my eyes break away from our deadlock and I look down.

My hand is not on your heart, it is twisted around my own. I blink and realise that the tears I saw you cry was only your eyes showing me my own reflecting. And in that moment I knew I could not go through with it, because even though I could be content with my own demise, I could not live with killing you, for I love you even as you break my heart.

I squeeze tighter, take a deep breath, and let go, just for a beat. Then I squeeze again, pumping toxic blood through my entire being, I shiver and shake as it enters my being. I take another deep oxygen filled burning breath, squeezing my own heart again and again, beat for beat, breath for breath, until eventually my blood runs clean and my heart is beating strong.

As I look back up into your eyes, I see you as if for the first time and I know that now I will be able to handle it. Your heartbreak and your own deep routed pain will beat in my heart, pounding it all out of you and into me. For I will perish in the toxins of the hurt we both have before I see you suffer again. I will continue to help your heart beat, because my heart, my heart, it beats in your heart.